Monday, July 4, 2016

Getting on with things

What I wrote to some friends, earlier this week:
"For the second or third night in a row I've had this strange, hard-to-put-my-finger-on feeling. Sometimes it's a quiet, subtle lightness, sometimes it's almost a giddiness. I don't know if it's contentment, happiness, freedom, self-sufficiency... What a sweet, intoxicating feeling it is, whatever it is. It feels like cool summer rain."

I am happy. I still cry most days. I miss Grandma, and missing her so acutely reminds me of how much I still miss Grandpa. One of the reasons I decided to leave the school was so I could spend more time with her (among others). I wish we'd been given that chance.

But I get up in the morning and ease into my day. I appreciate my cup of tea, and the sunlight coming in my window, and the cozy blanket on my futon, and the possibilities of the day before me. I spend some time on paperwork and other home-administrative tasks, and some time on decluttering (I've checked the first three decluttering projects off my list already, within a week of wrapping up my time with SMC), and a couple times a week we see friends, both mine and Sarah's. I restarted a batch of sourdough. Tonight we devoured my first experiment with excess-starter-baking (whenever you feed sourdough you have to discard a bunch of it. There are recipes especially for using up the excess starter, so you don't have to just toss it).  It turned out nicely. A subtle sourdough flavor, that we could easily tweak in a savory or sweet direction.

Sarah and I have started up our weekly homeschool check-ins again. How different they are from when we were last doing them regularly, 3 or so years ago. Back then her learning was self-directed but I was very much her education consultant -- she would tell me what her intentions/goals/priorities were, I would collect resources and suggest a plan, she would give feedback on the plan, and we'd tweak it until it seemed like something that would work for both of us (with the emphasis on whether it worked for her, but my thoughts still a big part of the conversation and decision). At this point she's transitioning to managing her own high school experience entirely. I asked for the weekly check-in, and I suggested the form of it (reflect on last week, review our self-selected priorities and projects, set intentions for the week). We're coming to the meeting as peers -- she has her priorities and projects, and I have mine. I'm continuing to actively model the skills I want her to develop and the questions I think she should be asking, but the actual prioritizing, choosing resources, and setting pace and direction... That's all up to her. For the summer, her priorities are relaxing, seeing friends, working on her comic-creation, and catching up on Duolingo (because they've started sending her sad owls when she doesn't keep up with her Norwegian lessons). My priorities are settling in to our new/old routines, self-care, making music, and starting my self-ed habit up again.